Tit-for-Tat among the Iroquois: A Game Theoretic Perspective on Inter-tribal Political Organization

Abstract

The Iroquois have intrigued scholars since anthropology's Nineteenth Century beginnings, in part, because their system of the League epitomizes intertribal politics unsullied by the presence of the State. We suggest that the emergence of an inter-group form of political management lacking the usual hierarchical institutions of stratified and statist societies can arise in an environment of tribal warfare and mistrust, if there are rather minimal conditions governing social interaction. These conditions have been investigated by game theorists analyzing the Tit-for-Tat solution to the "Prisoner's Dilemma," by biologists studying the evolution of cooperation, and by social scientists analyzing competition and cooperation in human societies. The Prisoner's Dilemma model includes a number of predictions that can be tested in the Iroquois by means of archaeological and ethnohistorical data and most of these predictions are confirmed. We conclude that the formalisms of game theory as well as the individualistic orientation of evolutionary biology provide new insights into the study of social organization and political anthropology.